U-of-L to Ban Smoking Starting November 19th

The University of Louisville will ban smoking on all its campuses. The changes will start November 19th.

Provost Shirley Willihnganz says smoking was already banned indoors on all campuses, but now the ban will extend to the outdoors as well. Smokers will be limited to university-designated smoking areas, starting November 19th, and smoking will be completely banned on June first.

Willihnganz says they’re phasing it in for students who might find it difficult to kick the habit.

“This is also a place where students live,” says Willihnganz, “and we are aware for students who smoke, it’s not going to be as easy as quitting by November 19th.”

The Belknap campus was smoke-free indoors, and the Health Sciences campus is already completely smoke-free, but Willihnganz says they wanted to make a statement against smoking campus-wide.

“It just seems very consistent with the university’s mission that we would be making strong statement that since we know that 80% of lung cancers are caused by either smoking directly or second-hand smoke that we would come out very strongly and say this is not something we think is good for people to do,” says Willihnganz.

As far as enforcement of the ban, Willihnganz says they’re hoping it will be mostly self-policing. But – she says – as the ban goes on, offenses will be handled in the same way as rules that are already in place.

Bellarmine University has also completely banned smoking; that takes effect January first.